The Republican nomination

Red-meat delivery

A MAN with my cholesterol levels has no business being fed as much pure red meat as was offered at last night's campaign event. Devoted to abortion and held by Personhood USA, about whomwe'vewritten before, the forum drew Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul to a rather dreary Hilton on the outskirts of Greenville (Mr Paul appeared via satellite from Washington, DC, having briefly stepped off the campaign trail to vote against a debt-ceiling increase) to answer a penetrating set of questions. Is life important? It is. Is there anything more important than life? There is not. Is abortion wrong? It is. When does life begin? At the moment of conception. So far, so unsurprising. The gems were further down in the questioning line.

Rick Perry went first. He was loose, funny and relaxed as only a man about to drop out of the presidential race could be. He genially floundered his way through some substantive questions about constitutional law, and declared his opposition to abortion so strong that he would bring government to a halt rather than sign any bill that included abortion-related funding. He sparked to life only when he started talking about Barack Obama ("this administration is at war with religion") and Mitt Romney. The latter's relatively recent discovery that he was in fact opposed to abortion rights was, Mr Perry charged, "a decision [he] made for political convenience, not an issue of the heart."

Mr Perry's problem has always been the culture-warrior's problem: only opposition moves him. He can rile a crowd as well as—and in the same way as—Pat Buchanan. Let a thousand pitchforks gleam! But then what? Ask Ron Paul why he wants to be president and he'll bang on about fractional banking and the Fed and sound money and raw milk until he dislocates his shoulders from excessive twitching. Ask Newt the same thing and he'll tell you why we're at the most perilous point in human history and we need to fundamentally transform the way we breathe air and eat food and he's the only American politician to ever truly understand human civilisation and by the way can he tell you about his plan to send poor children to mine tungsten on the moons of Neptune. Ask Mr Perry why he wanted to be president and all he could tell you is how awful the other guys are. That was necessary but insufficient. The crowd knew it, and apparently he does too now.

Still, he set in motion a contest—which candidate is most vehemently opposed to abortion rights, and who will do the most to curtail them—that the next three contestants took up with zeal. Newt Gingrich came out in full snarl, decrying "a secular judiciary that seeks to impose elite values on a country that deeply dislikes it." He offered a novel solution to this problem—one that went beyond his call for "aggressive, articulate leadership", a self-advertisement if ever there was one. If a court makes "a fundamentally wrong decision", the president can ignore it and Congress can abolish it. Mr Gingrich brushed off a panelist's suggestion this simply switched "tyranny by five justices for tyranny from one executive." If Congress sides with the Supreme Court against the president, it can vote to defund the presidency. If Congress supports the president, it can abolish the judiciary. "This is not something you would do capriciously," Mr Gingrich cautioned, in perhaps his first-ever understatement. "But I fully expect that as president there will be several occasions when we would collide." Phew! A Gingrich administration would see frequent rather than perpetual inter-governmental chaos. I'm relieved.

Rick Santorum also promised to "fight the courts". The president and every member of Congress takes an oath to uphold the constitution; "we have just as much say as they do." One wonders what their response would be if Mr Obama decided he was going to unilaterally ignore the Citizens United decision. Or imagine he had a Democratic majority in Congress and they passed legislation outlawing corporate political contributions. That certainly is in line with the Gingrich-Santorum view of a weak and dismissible judiciary. Still, Mr Santorum's main target was not law but science. "Science", he declared in answer to a question about experimental cloning, "is not an ethics- or moral-free zone. It is something society has every right—in fact, an obligation—to curb."

The crowd loved these attacks (though the night's biggest cheers went to Ron Paul's giant televised head), and there's nothing wrong with a little pre-primary pander. But what would America's schools look like under a president contemptuous of science and education? And if America's political system is fractious and prone to gridlock now, what will it look like when the president starts ignoring and undermining the courts? The best one can say about such full-on attacks on law and science is to hope the candidates are making them in bad faith.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

INTERACTIVE:Explore our map and guide to the race for the Republican candidacy

Second, abortion is by no means the most pressing problem facing America. Scrutinising candidates on this issue (at the expense of their positions on other issues, effectively leaving them to chance) will produce candidates who are hopelessly ill-equipped to tackle the real issues.

Third, anti-abortionists also present a false choice. The choice is not between a world with abortions, and a world without. It is a choice between a world with safe, clean, legal abortion, and a world with dangerous, dirty, illegal abortions -- which will cause a great deal more net suffering to all those involved. Banning abortion will not stop people getting abortions -- ever heard of Prohibition? Or the 'war on drugs'?

If any of these jokers became Prseident and stuck to their crazy ideas, America will go further down in terms of educational standing in the world. "Curb science"? "Ignore the Constitution"?

The US will soon become a banana republic. It's funny that the same fools that blame Obama and cry out loud that his Affordable Health Care Act is unconstitutional talk about ignoring the Constitution themselves! Do they even listen to themselves?

The Republican vision of America is getting more and more bizarre. What happened to Conservatives with a grasp on reality like the economist Milton Friedman? I'm becoming more and more liberal as Republicans fall into the deep toxic end of rational thought. Obama 2012.

That's a good point. In 2000 I considered myself a center-right independent with a serious civil libertarian streak. I usually split my ticket when voting and thought good ideas came from both parties from time to time. My vision of an ideal government was of one that was limited to just performing the functions best performed by government but doing them competently and efficiently. Intrusions into citizens private lives and spiritual and medical decisions by government offended me greatly (still does.) I've never had patience for moralizing blowhards on the right or left.

In early 2000 I would fit in with the moderate or liberal wing of most state's Republican party establishment. In early 2012 my basic political philosophy has barely changed yet I'm practically a Marxist compared to the current GOP. I'd have been drawn and quartered by the audience at the event described in this post.

The popularity of rejecting science in America is scary. Rejection of new ideas in favor of religious dogma was the main reason Islam and China fell behind Europe between 1500-1800. Instead of falling on our swords we are falling on our crosses.

In Blazing Saddles, when the townspeople gather in Church to discuss their options, a weathered old man - Gabby Johnson - delivers an unintelligible tirade. Howard Johnson then says: "Now who can argue with that? I think we're all indebted to Gabby Johnson for clearly stating what needed to be said. I'm particulary glad that these lovely children were here today to hear that speech. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed a courage little seen in this day and age."

Thank you Mel Brooks for rendering America as it so often is today: authentic frontier gibberish.

Are you really becoming more liberal in any absolute sense? Or just more liberal compared to the bizarre definition of "conservative" used by the far right end of the Republican Party? Personally, I've gone from being right of center in the Republican Party to way out on the left-most edge -- all without changing my actual positions much at all. And what little change there has been is in a slightly more conservative direction. I just won't move as far and as fast as the apparent core has moved.

A certain amount of mindless demagoguery is part and parcel of any Presidential election ("Yes we can" was a pretty vacuous slogan). However this is moving from mindless to insane: Gingrich wants to casually throw out checks and balances, the separation of powers, in essence proclaiming his wisdom to be a match for men much more learned than he. Frightening.

Where do these audiences come from? Do party strategists pay for these people to come or give them special access to the politicians? My mind immediately thinks of pro-regime demonstrations in Syria and Iran. Are these people just stooges meant to rally hatred and vilify the enemy (Democrats, not Iran or "evil" as some of you may be thinking).

It's too easy for an educated centre-left older Brit bloke like me to look at this comic opera and laugh. I know there are millions of intelligent Yanks looking at the same posturings with bewilderment & embarrassment.
Whatever I think of the right's obsessive religiousity; their rejection of "science" which conflicts with their convictions is in sharp contrast to Eastern (ok Chinese) avid studying of all world-wide scientific progress to leap ahead as quickly as possible while Americans reject 'pointy-head' elitism.

Europe doesn't have the same problems with science, we're just too comfortable, lazy and set in our ways.

this is really scary...
the us constitution calls for an independent JUDICIARY, EXECUTIVE, and LEGISLATIVE.. seperate but equal. this is intended to provide checks and balances.
the judiciary INTERPRETS the constitution. it is the final arbiter and matters relating to constitutionality.
for these morons to say they would undermine (worse yet IGNORE) the supreme court is essentially declaring their intent to impose a dictatorship on the country. what next, that they would ignore laws passed by congress, or circumvent congress in their spending directives?
bush jnr ursurped a lot of power from congress and placed it in the hands of the executive. states rights and citizens rights have already been SIGNIFICANTLY eroded.
people should be very, very afraid of what these retards are spweing out of their mouth.

I am an European and contrary to popular American believes, not all of us are crazed left wing socialists, thank you. But still I cannot believe the gibberish republican candidates let lose, just to the try to get get a job, they are - as proved by their nonsensical dribble - intellectually unable to perform, just as their party member, who was the lousiest President of the US in the last 100 years.

I cannot imagine a people, again falling for this horse..., but a people gets the government it deserves .... and the american people and the people of this world deserve better.